"Black Eye" and #BEENTRILL#'s Art Collaboration Yields a Killer Set of Tees

Gallerist Nicola Vassell and #BEENTRILL# co-founder Heron Preston have come together to create a limited run of T-shirts, promoting Vassell's new art exhibition "Black Eye."

The show, which is meant to empower and celebrate the works of rising and established artists alike, boasts a staggering array of talent like Steve McQueen, Jayson Musson (aka Hennessey Youngman of "Art Thoughtz" infamy), Kehinde Wiley, and many, many more. To help the exhibit maximize its viral potential, Vassell collaborated with friend and fellow artist Preston, who thought to design a limited run of T-shirts, conceiving the #BlackOriginal hashtag.

"He's the hashtag king," said Vassell when speaking on commissioning Preston.

Speaking on the design, Preston told Vogue, "I think with this shirt, what I was excited about was the sense of time and community. I was thinking, I want someone to hold onto this shirt forever. It’s a shirt that you’re not going to want to let your friend borrow. One of the original designs, I even stamped it with a date and address. I wanted to capture a sense of a date and time."

The #BlackOriginal T-shirts went on sale at the exhibition on Friday, with the remainder of what doesn't sell on the weekend going online at Been Trill's website on Monday. The gallery showed opened on May 2 at 57 Walker Street, and runs through May 24.